My buddy and I plan on visiting Switzerland in early April (4-10) to celebrate my 33rd birthday. However, it is like 'the blind leading the blind.' We have no clue on what we will be doing. We have no specific attractions or places to visit. All we want to do is explore the country and experience what it has to offer.

As the saying goes, "to get to know a city is to get lost in it." However, we would like some sort of ideas on where to get lost as we do not want to spend the entire vacation sitting on a train/bus or walking around with no point of destination.

We will be arriving in Zurich. We would greatly appreciate it if you could provide some suggestions and recommendations on where to go from Zurich in this time of the year. We were thinking of staying one or two nights in Zurich, then stay another night at a different town/city, or we could stay the entire time in Zurich. It would be great if we can experience a little bit of the mountain side, the night life, the local food, etc.

The Swiss Train Timetable (www.myswissalps.com/ti metable) is invaluable to plan your travel. If you haven’t used it before it will pay to read the instructions on that page before delving into the timetable.

For night life you are best off in Zurich but for mountains Lucerne is much better - I would split your time between the two. Maybe 2 nights in Zurich and 4 in Lucerne. A good day trip from Lucerne is Bern or Montreux on the Golden Pass line (for a nice scenic train trip).

We ended up booking 2 nights in Lucerne and then 3 nights in Zurich. We have the entire day of the 5th through the 7th in Lucerne and then head out to Zurich from the evening of the 7th until morning of the 10th.

While in Lucerne, we would like to check out Bern, Interlaken, Thun, and Andermatt. Could you give us good routes to be able to visit all these places, if doable?

For Zurich, could you provide us some recommendations on what to do there?

I wouldn't worry much about Interlaken - it isn't the most interesting town if you don't have something specific in mind to do there. Further, with Andermatt it is a good town for connecting on to the Glacier Express - did you have something specific in mind to see there?

As for recommendations in Lucerne and Zurich, first have a look at my links on my last post and click the what to do tab.

Otherwise, some night life areas in Zurich (I live there and know more about it than Lucerne). The Hardbrücke area (just outside of downtown Zurich) is quite popular as is the Niederdorf (old town of Zurich).